Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  How little the young value life, they who are so full of it. How little they have seen of death. They think it’s a mere pause in a drama, and they imagine the oppressing parents beating their breasts and wailing, and lost in that pleasure they never see the fall, the finality of one’s own vanishing. I said as much to Dipika, and she laughed. ‘I’m not a child,’ she said, and I saw then how far she had gone with this Prashant, her young woman’s splendid pride in the pleasures she had taken and given.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Dipika?’ I said.

  ‘Talk to Papa. He will listen to you.’ She took my hand and placed it on top of her head. ‘Since I was a girl you have been kind to me. And I know you do not think in any old-fashioned way.’

  What she meant was that in my company there were Brahmins and Marathas and Muslims and Dalits and OBCs, all working together, without difference or suspicion. We had OBCs who were controllers, and Brahmins who were foot-soldiers, and nobody gave it a thought. Muslims and Hindus were yaars who put their lives in each other’s palms every day, every night. But this was not special to my company, it was true of many others. We who were bhais were truly brothers, we lived outside the law and were bound to each other. We were desperate men, and therefore free. But a company was a company, and marriage – especially in a joint family like hers – was something else. But how to tell this child, who now held my hand in both of hers, how?

  ‘Go inside,’ I said. ‘Do nothing. Say nothing to anyone, not one person. Let me think about this.’

  She was now dripping tears down her chin. I wiped her face with her pallu, and set her on her way with her wobbly thali. And I told Chotta Badriya that we were going to drive out to Film City.

  ‘Now, bhai?’ he said.

  ‘No, next week, chutiya,’ I said. ‘Get in the car.’ He was a funny boy, that one, built like a truck, not scared of swords, willing to play with flying bullets, but scared of Film City in the dark because someone had told him that leopards came down from the wooded hills at night. He sat next to the driver with his arm draped over the back of the seat and his fingers drumming nervously. Finally I clamped down his hand gently, and said, ‘Okay, okay, stop shaking so much. You can stay in the car.’

  He waggled his head delightedly. ‘Yes, bhai. I’ll watch the car.’

  Every man in the car burst out laughing. I slapped the back of his head. ‘Bhadve, you guard it fiercely, okay? Make sure the mosquitoes don’t steal it, okay? And if a big cockroach comes, you blow him to pieces with your gullel, okay?’

  We laughed all the way to Film City. We slowed a bit for the guards at the gate, and then swept up the rising road, through the sudden darkness and quiet of the bushy slopes. It was already dusk, so the road was clear. There were the clustering shadows under the leaves, the flashing jigsaw of branches, and then suddenly in the clear there was a looming castle, high-turreted and fluttering with flags in the coming moonlight. It was made of wood and canvas, of course, but in this light it was absolutely real. We went past an entire Goan town square, capped by a high church holding up its crucifix, and also a fishing dock with boats asleep against each other in a leaning row. Here, in Film City, they made dreams of perfect love, they choreographed the songs that Dipika and her boyfriend no doubt sang to each other. The road curved sharply, and the engine whined, and we went up and up, to the helipad. The moon was low and close, hanging just above the lip of the high hills, and the valleys were cut sharply into silver and black, and a breeze slid up my neck. This was the deep quiet I craved, away from the city, that I came for again and again. I stepped to the edge of the helipad and the boys let me go, they stood in a distant arc and left me alone. I sat at the edge of the plateau, and looked for a leopard in the dappled patterning below. Come on, leopard, I said. Save me from this problem. I had promised the girl I would help, but how? She was a clever one, asking first and drawing me to her side. Otherwise, if her father had found out first, and asked me, without a thought I would have had her tattered Dalit boyfriend picked up and dropped off a cliff. Just like that. But now what? The daughter had asked for mercy, and I was Ganesh Gaitonde. But the father was my friend.

  I sat until the moon had receded into the heights of the sky, and the leopard didn’t come, and no easy answers. There was no solving this problem by killing anyone, and no amount of money would buy peace. There was love between the father and daughter, and so they would hate each other all the more, and wound each other, cutting nerves no assassin could ever reach. I got up and walked back through the boys, who sat in a dozing line. They staggered up and came after me, to the car. Chotta Badriya was fast asleep, his face against the window glass, lips plumped up and cheek flattened. I tapped the glass at his nose, and he came awake, groping under his shirt until he saw me. In that first waking clutch at the world, he had been afraid. I recognized the panic. We were all afraid. To walk out of the house, into a city street, into the air which hummed with the bullets of the next moment, to do this we cast aside fear, dropped it and pushed it into the deepest valley where the moon never shone. But the fear still moved, lived and fed, like an animal in the night. Chotta Badriya liked girls, very young ones. He even liked smallish women of older years who had no mausambis, who were flat before and behind and wore pigtails for him and sat on his lap and talked of dolls and held their heads to the side and giggled. He chodoed them sometimes, but I think only because the other boys would have laughed at him otherwise. For himself, he would have been happy just to hold them, to play at a dream of play, and so live a childhood which was free of the future. Now he was clearing his throat mightily and rolling down the window to spit.

  ‘Bastard,’ I said. ‘What a fine guard you are.’

  ‘Sorry, bhai,’ he said. ‘I was seeing leopards all over the place. So I thought I would never sleep. But then suddenly I must have fallen asleep.’

  ‘You were, chutiya. Like a baby.’ But I was rubbing the top of his head. He was a good boy. Brave and watchful, watchful for me, and intelligent. He noticed things, the look on people’s faces, cars parked where they shouldn’t be, and felt rumours on his nerve-endings. But he couldn’t help me now, with my quandary, my delicate puzzle which could break hearts and heads. None of them could. It made me angry, this sudden slide down and back into the slithering mess of family. I had lifted away, I had left everything behind. I had been alone. But there was no escape. The wheels slapped at the road and we went back to the city.

  The next day we waged the final battles of the elections. Bipin Bhonsle called again and again, polite as he had been during our first meeting, but nerve-racked and needing reassurance that we would give him his precious seat yet. The Congress incumbent had been going around the bastis, handing out hundred-rupee notes and rum and whole sheep to the citizens. Good fresh mutton is the basis of many a political career, I came to know. It made sense. A poor man fills his stomach, he takes pleasure in his dinner, he lubricates himself with two free pegs, maybe three, not too many because he has other plans, he rides his wife, in the morning they both go to the voting booth happy, in that uplifted haze their bodies feel light, and they forget all about how the khadi-wearing bhenchod politician has done nothing for them for years, how he has robbed and stolen and maybe murdered. All of that is gone, vanished, and the happy couple cast their votes, and the servant of the people is in once again, ready to serve them out of roti, kapda and makaan. Hungry, naked and without shelter, they have no memory after meat. So you feed sheep to sheep to herd them in the right direction, towards the slaughterhouse gate. Quite simple.

  But I had my own schemes ready. For two days I had sent out rumours. My boys went into the markets and bazaars and restaurants of the Congress and RPI areas and whispered, ‘The goondas are coming on election day, thugs have been hired.’ A rumour is the most cost-effective weapon ever, anywhere, you start it for nothing and then it grows, mutates, has offspring. In the morning you plant a little red squirming worm in some shopkeeper’s ears and by night there are a hundred
skyscraper-sized gory Ghatotkachas stalking the land. So I had the enemy voters nicely primed, covered in a sticky marinade of fear. Now it was time to stoke the fire. I had thirty motorcycles ready, with licence plates removed. We put two boys on each, faces covered with dakoo scarves, with bags full of soda bottles for the pillion riders, a crate’s worth for every bike. They went roaring out into the lanes. Through the enemy area they went, roaring and hooting. They cleared the streets with the bottles, gave each bottle a few shakes and lobbed it end over end at the few citizens brave enough to be still walking around. The glass flies like shrapnel, but really with soda bottles it’s the shattering burst that does the trick, sends the trembling civilians scuttling back to their homes with their pants heavy with piss. The boys had a good time, riding around in the cool of the morning, exercising their bowling arms. Chotta Badriya came back home flushed red and singing. ‘Any more, bhai?’ he yelled up to me from the road. I was sitting on the water tank on the roof. ‘Any more to do?’

  ‘Bas, Badriya, bas,’ I said. ‘Calm down. That was enough. Now the police will come.’

  ‘Phatak, phachak, the bottles burst, bhai.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Great fun, bhai.’

  ‘I know. Now sit quietly, and maybe we’ll do it again next year.’

  Sure the police came, they came running to the affected areas. They came with their rifles and lathis all ready. Inspector Samant slipped around a corner and found a phone and called me. ‘DCP Saab and ACP Saab are here, bhai,’ he said. ‘You got everybody moving. We are patrolling the streets. Preventing any disturbances, you see.’

  ‘Good, good,’ I said. Bipin Bhonsle had paid the policemen too, all the way to the top. They would organize the right kind of peace. ‘No more disturbances must happen. But you see anyone on the roads?’

  ‘Not one man, not one woman. I see only three dogs.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Typical Congress voters. We’ll let them go.’

  So I laughed and put down the phone. Just this much was enough to keep the enemy at home, to make the battlefield ours. No booth-capturing, no ballot-stuffing, just this. Meanwhile the boys had fanned out in our areas, and were taking the voters to the booths. ‘We are from the Fair Election Committee,’ they said, and they took our voters, in tens and twenties, to the voting centres. ‘All is peaceful,’ they said. ‘Come, come.’ And the voters came, safe and escorted, and Bipin Bhonsle’s men, wearing nice yellow party badges, smiled at them outside the booths. And the voters filed in, and were left all alone, and they made their little black marks on the ballot, and the folded pieces of paper fell into the slotted wooden boxes, making small rustles, and the lines moved efficiently along, and the day passed, and so the machinery of democracy moved and spun, with a little help from us.

  In Gopalmath, I sat on my roof and did my daily business. In the courtyard below, and out on the street, the usual clusters of supplicants gathered. Money was brought in, and I gave it out. Lives were brought to me, and I mended them. I gave justice. I ruled. The sun puddled, hovered and died its daily death. I ate, and retired to my bedroom. It was another quiet, ordinary day.

  Bipin Bhonsle won by six thousand three hundred and forty three-votes.

  I was dreading the wedding. Of course I had to go, but I didn’t know how I would face Dipika, show her my face with no magic solution to grant her eternal happiness. I was angered by this feeling of helplessness, this paralysis of will. The problem stayed with me, gnawing with a thousand tiny teeth at the edges of my mind, like a flood of relentless ants. I was furious with Dipika. Who was she? What did she mean to me, that I owed her this? A little nothing of a girl, to come between me and my friend, to haunt and bother me with her huge staring eyes, she wasn’t even pretty, why couldn’t I just tell her to take her dirty mashooq and go to hell? Why? But I couldn’t. She had begged me, and I had made a promise. There was no logic in it, but it was the truth, it had happened. So I had to act. But I still didn’t know what I was going to do.

  I took my gifts – gold bracelets, gold earrings and a gold necklace – and went to Paritosh Shah’s house on the wedding day. I hardly had my shoes off when Dipika came running to the door, stopped herself from falling by clutching at the jamb. She swayed there, in her sari of gold, and I could sense my boys averting their eyes. I knew they were thinking: what is Bhai doing now? This much was all it took to start a story that would get longer and fuller as it went out across the city. ‘Beti,’ I said. I patted her head paternally. Then I took her by the shoulder and led her inside. In a corridor, while her aunts and cousins brushed past, all shiny and magnificent in their very best, I leaned close to her and pretended to give her something out of my wallet. ‘Be calm, you fool,’ I told her. ‘If you act mad I can’t do anything for you. Behave yourself now. When I want to tell you something, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘But,’ she said. ‘But.’

  ‘Be quiet,’ I said. ‘If you want to do this big thing, be brave. Control yourself. Learn control. Leave fear behind. Look at me. Learn from me. You told me you were not a child, but you behave like one. Can you be a woman?’

  She blinked away her tears, and wiped her nose with the edge of her pallu. Then she nodded.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Go and be a part of your sister’s happiness. Be happy, or people will notice.’ She was still tremulous, aflicker with thin bolts of emotion up her neck and into her cheeks. ‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘I am Ganesh Gaitonde, and I am telling you that everything will be all right. Ganesh Gaitonde is telling you this. Do you believe him?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and as she said it she started to believe it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Go.’

  She skipped off, and at the edge of the courtyard she took two little girls by the hand and whirled with them, and in their pealing laughter there was her happiness, as palpable as the breath of the hundreds of flowers hanging in the doorways, on the walls. She was happy. I had given this to her, and I didn’t have it to give. I had no idea where to find it, how. And so in the mandap, sitting next to Paritosh Shah, as the priests sang and thick sacrificial smoke gusted from the fire and an elder sister’s happiness was chanted into being, I was helpless before the younger sister’s life. Yes, Dipika was happy now, sitting behind her sister, leaning on her mother’s shoulder, her face flushed and perspiring a little from the heat of the fire, eyes gleaming wet from the sting of the smoke. Looking at her, I thought: what makes a woman so much a prisoner, why? Why is one man a Dalit and poor, and another not? Why does this happen, and not that? Why did this woman die, and not that one? Why are we not free? And the Sanskrit choruses moved under my skin and I felt them shiver my soul, and the question came to me: what is Ganesh Gaitonde?

  After all the functions were over, after the eating and drinking and rituals of farewell, I said goodbye to Paritosh Shah and his wife and his parents and his entire battalions of Gujaratis, and he walked with me to the car, and even in the midst of all this, he noticed my distraction, and asked, ‘What’s the matter, bhai? You look tired. Still not sleeping?’

  ‘Yes, I’m very tired,’ I said.

  ‘Listen to me, then. You can’t go on like this. Take a Calmpose tonight, and tomorrow we will see to your health.’

  ‘Tomorrow I need to ask you a favour.’

  ‘Favour? What? Tell me now.’ He bent towards me, and had his arm over my shoulder. There was the big red smear of the tika on his forehead, and I could see the tiny white grains of rice in it. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘No, tomorrow, Paritosh Shah. Not today.’

  ‘All right, tomorrow then.’ He came close to me, drew me into his soft, cushiony hug and thumped me on the back. ‘I’ll come to your place in the morning.’

  ‘No, I’ll come to you.’ I squeezed his shoulder and drew away. ‘Let me.’

  ‘Fine, whatever you say, boss. Whenever you’re ready. I’m here all day tomorrow.’ But he was puzzled. He was not used to this Ganesh Gaitonde. In truth, it was a Ganesh Gaitonde I di
dn’t know well, either. I had been struggling to get some sleep lately, but now I had been cut adrift, cast into some unknown, tossing waters by a mere slip, a sliver of a girl whom I hardly knew, owed nothing to.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, raised a hand and went home. That night I didn’t care about seeming weak, and felt my own shame like a distant irritation. I took a Calmpose, and slept, but I dreamt of a black sea, heaving its endless swells at me, and nothing else was alive, nothing lived under that flat white sky, and I was alone.

  Bipin Bhonsle came to me the next morning, with gifts. He brought the cash he owed me, in four plastic bags, but he also brought a brand-new Sony video player, and four tapes, all of American films, and four big boxes of mithai. He said, ‘My father told me, “Take him some good Scotch,” but I told him, “Ganesh Bhai doesn’t touch the stuff, and I can see why. That’s why he’s so efficient.”’ He was sitting at the edge of the chair, all serious and enthusiastic. ‘You know what, Ganesh Bhai? I’ve made up my mind. From today, no more liquor for me also. I will learn from you. Now that we’ve won, there is a lot to do. No time now for drinking-shinking. We have to keep on winning.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I had woken up more tired than before, and my legs were heavy, unwieldy, as if the blood had become congealed and dense. But I roused myself to Bipin Bhonsle’s eagerness. ‘Good, Bipin, good. A sober man is focused, he is awake, he is watchful. No need for all this whisky and rum. Life is enough.’

  It was a speech I had given many times before. For him it was all new. ‘Right, Ganesh Bhai, of course: life is enough. But please, enjoy.’ He held out the tapes. ‘Each is an international hit, Ganesh Bhai. Action-packed. You will enjoy.’ He was so grateful it took an hour to get him out, and that only when I told him I was already late for a meeting at Paritosh Shah’s house. He left, but loudly protesting eternal loyalty, and anything I needed I should remember him, and of course he was only a small man but if there were anything I wanted I only had to call him, and on international pleasures he was an expert. ‘Hot tapes, electronics, cigars, anything, Ganesh Bhai, anything,’ he was saying even as he went down the stairs. He was wearing an orange shirt with a flower print, and brown gabardine trousers, and shoes of a deep reddish-brown hue, gold-buckled and glowing. When he turned to wave from the gate, the chain at his neck flashed fiercely in the sun. He was altogether a shiny man.